9 simple reasons why performance management is bollocks

Hoping this one might cheer up my chum in the RubyCorner*.

*There are 4 corners in my space. The one in the top left is red in colour. On StarTrek they call corners quadrants. Performance Management is a Vulcan plot, designed to vitiate humans. PM was originally developed by the Borg collective who hail from the Delta quadrant. There be dragons. And Borg. BTW, the Borg collective purchased PWC about 10 years ago. Shh, its a secret.

It involves people completely ignorant about an area of complex work making judgements on it using a coloured shape. Invariably a green one.

It is a job that self selects for people who aren’t interested in how it all works, and therefore remain ignorant of the flawed mind-set that it relies on, because if they do find out, they leave. Or if they are lazy, stay and type an embittered blog about it.

It requires statistical innumeracy. For reason, see point 4 above.

It costs an average large organisation at least £500,000 in annual total salary alone, across an organisation, for practically zero benefit.

I wrote an annual performance plan for the corporate part of an organisation,( ICT, procurement, finance etc) that included the corporate performance area, in two nights sitting at my dining…